Harold Backer, a 3-time Olympic rower, disappeared in 2015 after telling his family he was going for a bike ride. Days later, his financial advisory clients began receiving letters confessing to losing their money. His friend Kip unpacks what happened to Harold. Why do Olympians so often derail after retirement?

Read Kip McDaniel's long-form article on the case here.

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Aiden Gabor started working for the New Jersey mob as a kid. At 18, he was caught by the police and given a choice: help clean up the city or go to prison. In this episode, Aiden describes life as a police informant, putting away corrupt cops and politicians.

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In May 1970, an Air Force officer named George Burk took off from an airbase with 13 others. Minutes later, the plane suffered explosive decompression and hurtled back to the ground. George describes how luck and brute determination kept him alive.

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This week, we're playing you an episode from one of our favourite podcasts: One Minute Remaining. They're covering the story of murdered lottery winner, Abraham Lee Shakespeare, who in 2006 won a $30 million jackpot and was murdered. Dorice Moore, his friend, received a life sentence for his murder but claims she's innocent. One Minute Remaining hears her side without passing judgment.

We will be back with a new episode of our own next Friday (July 19).

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Kris Hansen was a young chemist working at 3M when she made an unnerving discovery. She was finding 3M's chemicals not only in their workers' blood samples, but in almost everyone worldwide. Shocked, she reported her find to management, and that's when her trouble really started.

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It was 1987 when a detective named Lex De Man first heard of The Family. The police had raided them a few months earlier, but they'd faced no investigation over multiple claims of child abuse. This is the story of how Lex had the cult's leader, Anne Hamilton-Byrne, hauled into court.

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Ben Shenton grew up in a religious sect in central Victoria called 'The Family'. The children were told that their leader, Anne Hamilton-Byrne, was a reincarnation of Jesus Christ and were made to dress alike and bleach their hair. This continued until Ben was 15, when police raided the compound. Ben tells us about his life before and after that raid.

You can buy Ben Shenton's autobiography 'Life Behind the Wire' here.

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Last week, we covered the story of a woman sold into slavery to run scams. This week, we meet the man who rescued her. We're speaking with Judah Tana, who runs the NGO Global Advance Projects. He explains how he ended up at the epicenter of the world's scams industry and how the business is expanding.

Global Advance Projects website is here

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